Ghazal 123, Verse 10

{123,10}

1) it's not the {cutting-off point / closing-verse}
of a sequence of ardor, this city
2) we've resolved upon a tour of Najaf
and a circumambulation of the {Holy Place / Ka'bah}

Notes:

maq:ta(( : 'Cutting, severing, dividing; amputation; a cut; — interruption, an abrupt breaking off; a place of separation: a pause (in reading verse), a caesura; — the last verse of a poem (in which the writer introduces his nom de plume)'. (Platts p.1056)

Bekhud
Mohani:

FWP:

This is the middle verse of a three-verse
verse-set; for general comments, see {123,9}.

The tone seems casual, easy, superior;
perhaps the speaker is chatting with some other travelers, in a bored and leisurely
way, about his plans. Plainly he is the monarch of all he surveys. Is he
deprecating Lucknow, by implying that it's just a casual way-station on the
road to the holy places, and thus not worth a visit in its own right? Is he deprecating the holy places, by implying that they're just places for casual
sightseeing, like Lucknow only a little later in the itinerary ('if it's Tuesday
it must be Najaf')? Is he deprecating Najaf, which merely gets a 'tour' [sair],
as opposed to the Ka'bah which gets a 'circumambulation' [:tauf]?
Is he deprecating the 'circumambulation' too, by combining it casually with
minor, trivial kinds of sightseeing?

And since he has already said in the previous
verse that he has very little interest in (or esteem for) mere 'touring'
or 'spectacle', is the whole rest of his journey destined to be as dubious
as his visit to Lucknow? (To call it a 'sequence of ardor' after the previous bored and
indifferent verse does sound a bit strange.) After he's seen the rest of
the itinerary, will he still be vaguely wondering why he ever undertook such
a trip in the first place? As so often, it's all in the tone, and ultimately
we have to supply much of the tone ourselves.

This verse also offers a remarkable and witty bit of sound-play
between the word shahr , or 'city', and shi((r
, or 'verse'. While they don't sound identical, they nevertheless sound quite
similar (especially in this position where the shahr
is really meant to sound metrically almost like a single long syllable), and
the prominent use of maq:ta(( , a term for the closing-verse
of a ghazal, at the beginning of the line alerts us to expect some related
bit of wordplay. We're not expecting sound-play, so there's an extra little
treat in the shock of recognition.

Moreover, to say 'it's not the closing-verse' is enjoyable
in itself: it's literally true (there's one more verse yet to come), but it
also heralds the fact that the 'sequence of ardor' constituted by the ghazal--
and Lucknow-- is almost over. The next verse will in fact be the closing-verse
of the verse-set, and of the ghazal itself-- and of Lucknow, since 'a hope/expectation'
will carry the speaker far beyond it.

Veena Oldenburg comments (May 2006), 'A more historical explanation
might be that Ghalib did not like the tawdry replica of Najaf and Karbala
made by Ghazi ud-Din Haidar in his Shah Najaf, which later became his tomb.
This was built around 1813-16 or thereabouts. Everyone gets a bit upset with
the pretentious stuff the Navabs did-- and perhaps that's what he's saying
about Lucknow.'